1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for determining television and interactive application viewership and, more particularly, to systems and methods for selectively controlling the monitoring of such viewership and usage on a program specific level.
2. Background of the Invention
Commercial television programming is generally funded by advertising revenue. The determination of how much a broadcaster can charge advertisers for placing an advertisement during a given time slot in a given television show depends on knowing how many people are likely to be watching at the time the advertisement is aired. This type of viewership data, or xe2x80x98ratingxe2x80x99, has normally been collected through various manual and automatic processes. Manual processes typically include a preselected number of households of viewers, and requires the viewers to manually record what television shows are being watched, at what times, and by whom. This intrusive process interferes with the viewers"" watching behavior and necessarily relies on the viewers accurately reporting their television viewing behavior.
To overcome the accuracy and intrusiveness problems, automatic methods typically rely on detecting channel selection in the broadcast receiver, and recording data indicative of such selection in some memory, or transmitting data of such selection to a central repository. Various means have been used to detect channel selection behavior in broadcast receivers, such as televisions, set top boxes, and video cassette recorders. Transmitting channel selection data has typically involved transmission by secondary telephone lines, or by polling in a cable system. Signals to control monitoring times have been transmitted to broadcast receivers using telephone, microwave, radio frequency transmitters, or the cable system itself. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,324 to McMullan, Jr. et al., discloses sending information about specific recording times to a remote terminal such as a set top box directly via cable lines.
These automated systems and methods, however have various limitations. While the actual information of interest to the broadcaster is what particular television programs are being watched and when, these techniques instead focus on detecting channel selection behavior, and use this information as a proxy for the television programs being watched. This is generally because the various types of broadcast receivers typically have the capability to only tune to specific channels, and at best store very limited data indicative of the channel.
Because prior techniques attempt only to detect channel selections, they are not able to more precisely control, on an individual basis, which television programs are monitored. Further, because channel selection is the primary data being monitored, prior techniques have not addressed controlling the level of detailed information that is monitored, such as how long a particular television program is watched, which particular portions of a television show are watched, which television program was watched prior to a monitored television program, or which television program was watched after a monitored television program. This detail is typically not captured because broadcast receivers typically do not provide a platform for executing configurable monitoring applications that are associated with particular television programs.
Further, conventional monitoring methods depend on the pre-selection of a number of households that will have the monitoring equipment or capability installed. As a result, there is little, if any, ability to dynamically configure which households are included in a particular monitoring event for a particular television program.
Another limitation of conventional monitoring methods is their inapplicability to monitoring the use of interactive applications. Interactive television has been much discussed, but rarely implemented beyond very small test markets. However, truly national broadcasting of interactive applications which enhance the viewing of television programs, advertisements, and other programminng material will benefit from usage data indicating the usage rate of interactive applications. Since interactive applications may be operated in a channel independent manner, conventional channel selection monitoring methods do not accurately track usage of interactive applications.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system and method for precisely monitoring the viewership of television programs and the usage of interactive applications. It is further desirable to provide a system and method that allows for dynamic configuration of which television programs and interactive applications are monitored and the level of detailed information that is captured during the monitoring period.
The present invention overcomes the limitations of conventional television viewing monitoring techniques by providing a system and method that allows for specification of individual television programs and interactive applications to be monitored, along with specific control over the level and type of detailed information to be captured during monitoring. The monitoring is silent because the viewer is not required to initiate the monitoring and need not know that monitoring is occurring. The present invention further allows the monitored data from individual televisions, set top boxes, video cassette recorders, and other broadcast receivers to be accumulated and aggregated at local and national levels, and augmented with demographic or psychographic data about the viewing audience. This augmented data provides the broadcaster with a very precise analysis of the audience viewing particular television programs or using particular interactive applications. For example, the present invention allows a broadcaster to accurately determine the percentage of households with an income over $50,000 that watched a certain commercial broadcast 15 minutes into a single episode of a particular situation comedy.
A system in accordance with the present invention includes a number of broadcast receivers, such as set top boxes, televisions, video cassette recorders, and the like, that are configured to include a microprocessor and a memory for storing and executing interactive applications. The interactive applications are broadcast with the television broadcast signal, and typically accompany television programs or advertisements, but may be independent of either.
The system also includes a broadcaster that is the source of broadcast data including television programs, commercials, and interactive applications. The broadcaster typically includes an automated broadcast selection mechanism to automatically control the selection of broadcast data according to a playlist which defines that specific sequence of broadcast data, typically including the start time, program, and channel identity of each item of data being broadcast. The broadcaster includes a data insertion unit that inserts a monitoring interactive application into a program or broadcast signal. The broadcast signal is then broadcast by a transmitter.
Communicatively coupled to the broadcaster is a broadcast server that receives from the automated broadcast selection mechanism the playlist of broadcast data. The broadcast server also maintains a database of interactive applications, including monitoring interactive applications. The various interactive applications are associated with individual broadcasters, television programs, and commercials. The broadcast server correlates particular ones of the interactive applications, and especially the monitoring interactive applications with particular broadcast data that is to be monitored. These selected monitoring interactive applications are communicated to the data insertion unit which inserts them into the broadcast signal to accompany the particular broadcast data to be monitored.
The broadcast signal containing the monitoring interactive application and the broadcast data to be monitored is received by any broadcast receiver tuned to the specific channel upon which the monitoring interactive application is broadcast. Thus only those broadcast receivers that are tuned to such channel will receive the monitoring interactive application.
However, instead of requiring monitoring at each and every broadcast receiver that so receives the broadcast signal, the monitoring interactive application includes data and algorithms which selectively control which broadcast receivers monitor viewership or usage. The monitoring algorithms of the monitoring interactive application are configurable for each individual television program, commercial, or interactive application to be monitored to adjust the sample size in response to .predicted market share, time of day, and other factors. For example, for a very popular television program watched by millions of viewers, the monitoring interactive application may be configured to create 1% sample of about 10,000 viewers. For a less popular television program with only about 100,000 viewers, the monitoring interactive application may be configured to create a 10% sample. This ability to control sample size avoids overloading the response capacity of the monitoring system and enhances the precision with which viewership data is collected.
In addition, the monitoring interactive applications may be individually configured to control the level or type of detailed information that is monitored. A basic level of monitoring is determining whether the particular television program or commercial is being watched at all. In addition, the monitoring interactive application may be configured to determine the total amount of time the program was watched, the starting and ending viewing times, the channel entry path (which channel was being watched or other event prior to the current program being monitored), the channel exit path (which channel was watched or other event, after or during, the current program being monitored), and the volume settings during the monitored program. Also, the monitoring interactive application may be configured to monitor aspects of a channel or network, such as start and ending times, and entry and exits paths.
Finally, as a further embodiment of the present invention, the monitoring applications may be configured to monitor functionality of the broadcast receiver itself, so that this information may be provided to a manufacturer of the broadcast receiver. Features of the broadcast receiver that may be monitored include, for example, whether a picture-in-picture (PIP) function is used (including size, location, and channel selection of the PIP), which video inputs are active, whether an upstream tuner is used in conjunction with the broadcast receiver, and use of features such as mute, closed-captioning, stereo surround, and so forth.
In this embodiment, the monitoring interactive applications operate invisibly to the viewers so that viewers need not manually initiate monitoring of their viewing behaviors. The monitoring interactive application may be configured to operate automatically in this fashion, or to be initiated by a viewer.
Beyond monitoring television programs and commercials, the monitoring algorithms and data may be embedded in any interactive application that provides interactive functionality to the user. Example interactive applications include applications for registering viewer feedback during a television program, applications providing sport statistics during an accompanying sports broadcast, applications providing financial data or weather information, and applications for purchasing advertised items or services. These and other types of interactive applications may include the monitoring algorithms and data and thereby be able to selectively monitor the usage of these applications along the same dimensions as mentioned above. In addition, an interactive application can report which of its forms were used, the amount of time spent on each form, the entry and exit time on each form, the entry and exit path of each form (i.e. previous and next form), and viewer channel selections during use of the interactive application. This type of precise monitoring informs the owner of the interactive application of the usage and effectiveness of the application.
The preferred system includes a number of data centers, each operating, for example, at a local cable system providing cable service to a number of broadcast receivers in a local service area. Each broadcast receiver that is monitoring transmits a response to its local data center. The response includes the monitoring data, along with an identification code for the monitoring interactive application that performed the monitoring, and an identification code of the broadcast receiver providing the response. The data center receives the responses from the various local broadcast receivers and aggregates them into an aggregate set of data. The aggregate data describes local rating and usage information for the monitored program or interactive application in various geographic areas. In addition, the data center is communicatively coupled to a database of subscriber information that is indexed by the broadcast receiver""s terminal identification codes. Using the broadcast receiver identification code, the data center obtains and aggregates the subscriber information in the database, thereby providing, for example, aggregate viewership data with respect to geographic location. The data center may be further coupled to geographic, demographic and/or psychographic data collections, including such data as household income, racial classifications, interests and preferences, and the like in order to create detailed reports about viewership and usage.
The aggregated reports from various data centers are transmitted to a central data center, where they are further aggregated to reflect a regional or national level of data. The data center generates these regionally aggregated reports, and provides them to the various broadcasters.
A method of selectively monitoring broadcast data in accordance with the present invention includes receiving at a broadcast receiver an interactive application accompanying a broadcast program, executing the interactive application to selectively determine whether the broadcast program accompanying the interactive application is to be monitored, responsive to this determination, configuring the interactive application to monitor selected attributes of viewership of the broadcast program, and monitoring the selected attributes of viewership by storing data indicative of the selected attributes. As an additional step, the method includes configuring an interactive application by defining the selected attributes of a broadcast program to be monitored, storing within the interactive application data indicative of the selected attributes, and transmitting the interactive application so configured to the remote broadcast reception terminal.